The verdict fell at the end of the day on Tuesday: the DNCG confirmed the demotion of Sochaux to the national level, following its financial problems. A blow from the side of the historic Auguste-Bonal stadium, since the Sochaux club will probably not be able to recover, with the prospect of having to start again perhaps even lower, in the fifth division.
As for Strasbourg and Bastia before them, the Cubs will have to start from scratch to rebuild themselves. And as always, an inescapable question arises: how did this monument of French football come to this?
With its 95 years of existence, its two titles of champion of France, its successes in the Coupe de France, its 2,368 matches in the elite, Sochaux is not just anyone in the football landscape of France. On the side of the supporters, this news of the administrative relegation was necessarily felt as a shock, like Florian, faithful support of the Doubiste training for 15 years. “We’re having a hard time with it, because we learned all this bad news in a very short time. We knew that the deficit had widened but not to this extent… We trusted shareholders who invest only to get people talking about them, without knowing anything about it. How can they understand what Sochaux stands for? »
�� Press release from the FCSM following the decision of the DNCG on Tuesday 11 July. Already before the demotion to National 1 pronounced on June 28 by the DNCG as part of the examination of its situation for the 2023/2024 sports season, FC Sochaux-Montbéliard has… pic.twitter.com/ RByo5eNZ6I
In the Doubs, the turning point was the mid-2010s. After the club’s descent into Ligue 2 in 2014, Peugeot, the historical shareholder, decided to withdraw a year later. After 87 years of common history with the car manufacturer, FC Sochaux-Montbelliard is rushing into the unknown. “It’s still a trauma for us, the Sochaliens, says Florian. We are still talking about the founders, this club was put on the map thanks to Peugeot! After that, the problems are chained, and one wonders where is the end of the tunnel. The Cubs thus become the first European team to switch to the Chinese flag, without however finding the flavor of Ligue 1.
After Ledus, the Spaniards of Baskonia and recently the Nenking Group, Sochaux has chained the buyers but especially the risky managements. In the sights of the supporters, today, we find Samuel Laurent, general manager of the club since 2019. The latter has chained the controversies and weighed down the finances, as evidenced by the deficit of 22 million euros blamed on the FCSM. With transfers and salaries beyond the means of Sochaux, an inappropriate attitude and a certain tendency to mythomania, the leader known to be an essayist specializing in Islamism is now undesirable at Bonal.
“What I blame him for is not being there when the club needed him in recent months. When you lose eight games in a row, it’s the role of the president to go into the locker room to solve the problem. The person responsible for this fiasco, his name is Samuel Laurent. He’s totally incompetent, he admits it himself, “says Jean-Claude Plessis, former emblematic president of Sochaux, on Eurosport.
An opinion shared by Sochaux supporters who quickly became disillusioned with their leader too far from reality. “He was given full powers by the shareholder who runs the club from China,” confirms Florian. He tried a big bluff by offering salaries worthy of Ligue 1. But from there to lie to us and put us in the hard like that, we have a hard time accepting it. I’ve met him before and felt he didn’t have the stature for the job. He should have left a long time ago, we had many warning signs but he was untouchable until then. »
And now ? Sochaux is heading into the unknown with, for the moment, the ambition of finding a buyer in the days to come to stay in national, under penalty of having to start again lower, in the fifth division. A prospect that does not scare Florian. “The Fifth Division can be a quagmire like a springboard. For the moment, we are just relegated to national, we have a week to find a buyer. But paradoxically I prefer that we take our time and leave with a local investor, someone who knows the Sochaux identity well, rather than a new seller of illusions. We want to reclaim the club. »
The Cubs will thus have to whip to regain their rank, in good memory of the pages written by Bernard Genghini, Benoît Pedretti, Francileudo Santos, Marvin Martin or even Teddy Richert. The outcome is inevitably terrible for the lovers of this club, who did not hesitate to demonstrate and launch petitions so that FC Sochaux-Montbéliard does not sink into anonymity. The reconstruction promises to be slow but it will undoubtedly be beneficial for this pillar of French football.